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Animals in War: Multispecies Agency and the Memory of the Colombian Armed Conflict

In one testimony from Colombia’s armed conflict, a parrot named Lola repeated the phrases she heard around her: “Paraco asesino” (“paramilitary murderer”), “Viva la guerrilla” (“long live the guerrilla”), and “The vultures are coming” Her voice condensed the sounds, fears, and political tensions of war into a multispecies archive of memory. Far from being passive witnesses, animals moved within the infrastructures of conflict as companions, alarms, transportation, and sometimes even weapons. Yet these violent incorporations are only the most extreme expression of a broader multispecies world of conflict. (more…) (read more...)

Making for the Feed: Creativity, Platforms, and Visibility in China

Creativity is often imagined as a deeply human capacity: a moment of inspiration, a flash of originality, or an individual act of expression. Yet in contemporary digital environments, creativity rarely unfolds in isolation from technological systems. Across creative industries, from fashion and design to visual media, branding, and online content production, creative work increasingly takes shape within infrastructures of platforms, software tools, and algorithmic systems. These technologies do not simply enable creativity; they actively shape how creative ideas are imagined, produced, circulated, and evaluated. (more…) (read more...)

What Would Happen if Ethnographers Learned to Process Signals?

During my doctoral research, focused on neuroscience laboratories and their forms of engagement with other spaces in the city of Bogotá, Colombia, I have been observing how artists and researchers use different processes to modulate, transform, and process biological signals in order to create artistic works. This experience led me to try to learn how to use the same software they employ. I created a small piece that I would like to show, along with a brief presentation of some of the reflections that emerged from it. (more…) (read more...)